There’s a bit of an implicit norm that has accumulated over the past few years, but inconsistently, and AFAICT no one has publicly argued for it.
Sometimes, when arguing online, you will notice yourself going into a mode that is more like a rant than like careful arguing. Or, you know is not really passing your interlocutor’s Intellectual Turing Test. Or, you know is psychologizing someone, and there’s decent odds you’re wrong (perhaps only in a subtle way that isn’t core to your point but is going to feel violating to the person you’re psychologizing).
Sometimes, the correct action is “just don’t do those things.”
Sometimes, IMO, the correct action is “do those things, but carefully.”
Sometimes, IMO, the theoretically ideal correct action all-else-equal is “do those things carefully”, but you’re busy and it’s realistically a choice between “do them uncarefully” or “don’t do it at all”, and it’s actually better to do it uncarefully than not-at-all.
In such case, I think it’s noticeably better to include a short disclaimer like “I recognize I am being uncharitable right now, and maybe am wrong about this, and am sorry.”
The “I may be wrong” and “I’m sorry” parts are both pretty useful (especially if you don’t have established trust with the interlocutor)
The first, because it’s true (it’s generally a good epistemic move to have at least two real hypotheses, and if you don’t, IMO you should regard your conclusion as sus). The second, because uncareful rants and uncareful psychologizing and uncharitable paraphrases do have a decent chance of damaging the epistemic commons (not merely hurting people’s feelings).
“Rudeness” is a useful concept. It’s a way of agreeing “here are some actions that people will realistically do sometimes, sometimes for good reasons, but, it would be bad if people did them willy-nilly.” It sets incentives better IMO if the expectation is “if you do the rude thing, you do take some reputational hit, and if you do it too much without somehow making up for it, longterm consequences will accumulate.”
(Title of this post should probably actually be something like: “</costlyButOwnedRantThatIAcceptResponsibilityFor>”, to bake the responsibility more into the meme. But, that title sucks and I haven’t thought of a better one.
I think it’s a reasonable counterargument to some previous-debates-about-norms, that “adding friction to people thinking out loud is often way, way, worse than you might naively expect.” But, I think adding a quick disclaimer is just not that hard.
I think this is a useful thing to do even if there’s not a coordinated social norm about it. But, I do separately think it’d be good if it were considered “extra rude” to do uncareful rants, and uncharitable psychologizing, without briefly noting them as such.
</rant> </uncharitable> </psychologizing>
There’s a bit of an implicit norm that has accumulated over the past few years, but inconsistently, and AFAICT no one has publicly argued for it.
Sometimes, when arguing online, you will notice yourself going into a mode that is more like a rant than like careful arguing. Or, you know is not really passing your interlocutor’s Intellectual Turing Test. Or, you know is psychologizing someone, and there’s decent odds you’re wrong (perhaps only in a subtle way that isn’t core to your point but is going to feel violating to the person you’re psychologizing).
Sometimes, the correct action is “just don’t do those things.”
Sometimes, IMO, the correct action is “do those things, but carefully.”
Sometimes, IMO, the theoretically ideal correct action all-else-equal is “do those things carefully”, but you’re busy and it’s realistically a choice between “do them uncarefully” or “don’t do it at all”, and it’s actually better to do it uncarefully than not-at-all.
In such case, I think it’s noticeably better to include a short disclaimer like “I recognize I am being uncharitable right now, and maybe am wrong about this, and am sorry.”
The “I may be wrong” and “I’m sorry” parts are both pretty useful (especially if you don’t have established trust with the interlocutor)
The first, because it’s true (it’s generally a good epistemic move to have at least two real hypotheses, and if you don’t, IMO you should regard your conclusion as sus). The second, because uncareful rants and uncareful psychologizing and uncharitable paraphrases do have a decent chance of damaging the epistemic commons (not merely hurting people’s feelings).
“Rudeness” is a useful concept. It’s a way of agreeing “here are some actions that people will realistically do sometimes, sometimes for good reasons, but, it would be bad if people did them willy-nilly.” It sets incentives better IMO if the expectation is “if you do the rude thing, you do take some reputational hit, and if you do it too much without somehow making up for it, longterm consequences will accumulate.”
(Title of this post should probably actually be something like: “</costlyButOwnedRantThatIAcceptResponsibilityFor>”, to bake the responsibility more into the meme. But, that title sucks and I haven’t thought of a better one.
I think it’s a reasonable counterargument to some previous-debates-about-norms, that “adding friction to people thinking out loud is often way, way, worse than you might naively expect.” But, I think adding a quick disclaimer is just not that hard.
I think this is a useful thing to do even if there’s not a coordinated social norm about it. But, I do separately think it’d be good if it were considered “extra rude” to do uncareful rants, and uncharitable psychologizing, without briefly noting them as such.
See: Generalized Hangriness: A Standard Rationalist Stance Toward Emotions.